The Masandawana attacker was at the Premier Soccer League offices on Thursday night to complete a loan move to Matsatsantsa as the end of the January transfer window drew close, with the paperwork being completed in time for him to start training with Kaitano Tembo today (Friday).

Lebese, now 29, will have just over a week before his new club’s next game – against Golden Arrows – and he explained that some of his former teammates such as Reneilwe Letsholonyane and Morgan Gould reassured him that the blue side of Tshwane would be a good place to be.

Speaking moments after completing his move last night, the former Kaizer Chiefs man said, “There are good players there, and I knew there are good players there… But I think I have something different to contribute to the team.

“I’ve got a couple of guys at SuperSport that I know from Chiefs, and I had a chat with them. They said it was a great club. I knew it was great, but they said what it was like inside the changing room. I’m happy to be joining them, hopefully, I’ll be making it the happiest six months of my career.”

After playing less than 21 league games in a campaign last year for the first time since 2010/11, and not a single one in 2018/19, Lebese admits that it’s a relief to get a clean slate at a new club, saying that he was never told what he needed to work on during his time at Chloorkop.

He explained, “I’m very much relieved, I was holding thumbs that it would happen, an all glory to God that I’m able to compete again… This (the transfer) was the motivation, I had to work on myself until the transfer window opened so that I could get a shot elsewhere because I knew it wasn’t going to come.

“I like to work with targets, if you tell me I need to improve this to play then I know what I’m working on, unfortunately, I didn’t know what I had to improve, so I just had (to) take a wild guess that I needed to improve certain things and I did that. I worked on me, every day at training, and hopefully, it’s going to help me (with) my new challenge.”

He’s only played 10 Absa Premiership games since the start of the 2017/18 season when he joined Downs, but he doesn’t feel like he has to prove anything to anyone except himself. He added, “I’m looking forward to settling in, to meeting the guys and contributing to the team… I just have to prove to myself that I still have it and that I can still play. I want to be happy again, I’ve been depressed for I don’t know how many months, honestly. I’m happy to be getting this new challenge.

“It was difficult (at Sundowns), when you have almost no-one to talk to, you just go to training there, warm up, go home, and you don’t know what to work on…”

So was a return to Chiefs on the cards before SuperSport came in? Or Cape Town City? “No,” he says. “It was never in the picture. There was just (Amakhosi) supporters really wanting to have me back, but it was never an option. (There was not) really nothing formal (with City), it didn’t happen also.”

Lebese’s loan move to SuperSport does not have an option to buy attached, meaning that he will – as things stand – return to Sundowns at the end of the season.